A short life of the author
Edward Lear (1812–1888) was born in Holloway, London, the twentieth of twenty-one children, and became the greatest nonsense poet in the English language and a gifted natural history and landscape painter. His Book of Nonsense (1846) popularized the limerick form, and his longer poems — “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat,” “The Jumblies,” “The Dong with a Luminous Nose” — are among the most memorized and loved poems in English. He was also an accomplished artist whose ornithological illustrations rival Audubon’s and whose landscape paintings of the Mediterranean, India, and the Middle East document places and peoples with remarkable fidelity.
Life and Career
Lear’s early life was unhappy. His father, a stockbroker, was imprisoned for debt; his mother handed Edward over to his elder sister Ann, who raised him. He suffered from epilepsy — which he called “the Demon” and concealed throughout his life — depression, asthma, and bronchitis. He was largely self-taught as an artist.
At eighteen he was hired by the Zoological Society of London to draw parrots, and his Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae (1832) was published before he was twenty — a work of ornithological art that established his reputation. The Earl of Derby invited him to Knowsley Hall to draw the menagerie, and it was there, entertaining the Earl’s grandchildren, that Lear began writing limericks and drawing the absurd illustrations that accompanied them.
A Book of Nonsense (1846) was published anonymously (“by Derry down Derry”) and became one of the most popular books of the Victorian era. The enlarged edition of 1861 sold so well that it was rumoured to be the work of the Earl of Derby himself (the names “Lear” and “Earl” being anagrammatic).
From the 1830s onward, Lear traveled compulsively — Italy, Greece, Albania, Egypt, Palestine, India, Ceylon — painting landscapes and recording his journeys in illustrated travel books. He spent his later years in San Remo, Italy, with his cat Foss and his faithful servant Giorgio, increasingly lonely and melancholic. He never married, and the nature of his emotional life remains debated — his intense attachments to younger men suggest, though do not prove, homosexuality.
Major Works and Themes
Lear’s nonsense poetry operates through a tension between the absurd and the melancholy. “The Dong with a Luminous Nose” is a poem of genuine anguish dressed in comic costume. “The Jumblies” — “They went to sea in a Sieve, they did” — celebrates the courage of those who defy conventional wisdom, a theme with obvious autobiographical resonance for a lonely, epileptic, wandering artist.
His limericks follow a strict form — the last line typically echoes the first — and his illustrations are essential: the poetry and the drawing are inseparable.
Critical Reception and Legacy
Lear was enormously popular in his lifetime and has never gone out of print. His influence on English literary nonsense — Lewis Carroll, Hilaire Belloc, Spike Milligan, Roald Dahl — is foundational. His landscape paintings and travel writings have been reassessed upward in recent decades, and exhibitions of his art draw substantial audiences.
Key Works
- A Book of Nonsense (1846; enlarged 1861)
- Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets (1871)
- More Nonsense (1872)
- Laughable Lyrics (1877)
Collecting Lear
A Book of Nonsense (1846, Thomas McLean) is the first edition: published in two volumes with lithographed illustrations. It is extremely rare — copies bring $5,000–$20,000. The enlarged 1861 edition (Routledge, Warne and Routledge) is more accessible: $500–$2,000.
Nonsense Songs (1871, Robert Bush) first edition: $300–$1,000.
Lear’s ornithological works are separately and actively collected. Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae (1832) is a major natural history book: individual plates bring $500–$3,000, and complete copies are museum-level items.
His original drawings and watercolours appear regularly at auction and are keenly sought by both art and book collectors. Landscape watercolours typically bring $1,000–$10,000 depending on subject and quality.